Paso Robles’ police protection dwindling

February 4, 2012

EDITOR’S NOTE: See Paso Robles Police sworn officers: a current list of department sworn staff; and Paso Robles’ Service Reduction Plan, a mandated plan for reduced police services at the bottom of this story.

By KAREN VELIE and DANIEL BLACKBURN

Rattled by a recent spike in violent crime, several Paso Robles police officers are questioning the impact the department’s current policy of not always responding to some criminal activities is having on public safety.

Paso Robles has been operating under a reduced police presence for the past year, with stringent new policies requiring that officers not respond to reports of drug activity, driving under the influence, and incidents of vehicular hit and run, whenever the department is operating in “safety mode.”

City Manager Jim App and Chief Lisa Solomon enacted a police department service reduction plan in January 2011 that mandates officers not respond to a long list of crimes during times the department is short-staffed. In addition, the plan changes some day-to-day police response and investigation policies.

For example, during the past year, property thefts with a loss of of $10,000 or less — if not solved immediately by the responding patrol officer — are not forwarded to a detective for further investigation, according to the plan.

“They have taken away officer discretion,” said one officer who asked to remain unnamed to protect him from retaliation. “It (the service reduction plan) is absolutely affecting public safety.”

Due to budget cuts, the department has been thinned from an approved 46 sworn officers in 2007, to 26 officers today.

As a result, the department operated in safety response mode for 587 hours during the past 12 months, said Jim App, the city manager.

That was because of a prior hiring freeze, minus several officers who were placed on paid administrative leave for between four to six months each, and officers who retired or were forced to resign.

During safety mode, only two patrol officers are available to take calls. Dispatchers do not send an officer to 18 types of crimes including battery that is not in progress, theft reports when a suspect is not in custody, drug activity, family disturbances and DUI calls.

“The safety/service response levels were implemented to ensure safety to the public and officers,” App said. “It allows for delayed response to low-level service calls in order to maintain staffing for immediate response to emergency or in-progress calls for service.”

App said he informed city council members of the reduction in services not long after the new program was put into practice.

Councilman Ed Steinbeck said he agrees “that we need to prioritize calls depending on what else is happening at the moment.”

Nevertheless, several officers claim that while Solomon has reduced drug and DUI responses, she is reprimanding officers who do not write enough high-dollar traffic tickets to comply with a questionable ticket quota system further reducing their ability to combat drug and gang activity.

During the past year, Paso Robles’ violent and gang-related crimes have soared with a rash of drug and/or gang-related crimes, including murders, stabbings, robberies, assaults and drive-by shootings.

As a result, officials last year organized a multi-agency task force with a goal of identifying and arresting gang members. During Labor Day weekend, law enforcement personnel including San Luis Obispo County Sheriff deputies blanketed Paso Robles as they rolled out their “Safe Streets” campaign, making 35 arrests and issuing 30 traffic citations.

“We will bring together all resources at my disposal and introduce additional law enforcement partners, including FBI, California Highway Patrol, Monterey County Sheriffs, Probation and Parole, as well as enhancing our local gang task force,” said Sheriff Ian Parkinson during a press conference he held with Solomon in September. “I do not intend to allow this kind of activity in the North County.”

Sheriff department officials did not respond to numerous requests for information regarding the current disposition of the Safe Street campaign and how much assistance the top county law enforcement agency is providing the understaffed Paso Robles Police department.

County wide, law enforcement agencies are short-staffed, mostly by one or two officers. Even so, officials with the county’s other six cities said their police departments are not operating under service reduction plans or safety modes.

Last night was a staged bunch of bs. Jim App, you can shove your antics up your ass and hers. You know you are a couple of complete losers. Some of the speakers act like she has never missed a spot while wiping her ass. What a joke! If anyone is stupid enough to think that the officers that filed the claims are making this up, just watch. No attorney in their right mind would take on a case like these unless it was a sure win. Just probe into their chapter 7 filing for their sign company where they stated they had no inventory in 2007 for another lie. They had inventory in 2009 which is highly illegal and they know it.

It just irks my ass that people like this file Bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a legal process for people who are broke, not for two Govt. employees earning over 300K combined! This needs to be looked into.
This needs repeating (copied from SMPD website);

LAW ENFORCEMENT CODE OF ETHICS
As A Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind; to safeguard lives and property; to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality and justice.

I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all; maintain courageous calm in the face of danger, scorn, or ridicule; develop self-restrain; and be constantly mindful of the welfare of others. Honest in thought and deed in both my personal and official life, I will be exemplary in obeying the laws of the land and the regulations of my department. Whatever I see or hear of a confidential nature or that is confided to me in my official capacity will be kept ever secret unless revelation is necessary in the performance of my duty.

I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, animosities or friendships to influence my decisions. With no compromise for crime and with relentless prosecution of criminals, I will enforce the law courteously and appropriately without fear or favor, malice or ill will, never employing unnecessary force or violence and never accepting gratuities.

I recognize the badge of my office as a symbol of public faith, and I accept it as a public trust to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of the police service. I will constantly strive to achieve these objectives and ideals, dedicating myself before God to my chosen profession…law enforcement

Does ANYONE know if they were successful in pulling off a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy? Did the judge order a Chapter 11 instead? If they got away with this, it should be the FBI brought in. Bankruptcy fraud is a Federal Offence. Can someone please look this up if they have the ability? I’d like to see ALL of her illegal activities addressed NOW. WAY OVERDUE :(

Java script has nothing to do with being unable to use the like/dislike features of particular articles or posts, as I wrote to your calcoast news “admin.” It has to do with your “administrators” disabling the feature on specific posts, OR your Web site is being compromised by persons unknown. I hate to break it to you, but there is a possibility that someone is manipulating the reader responses to your articles. And no, Spork/Velie, this is no “conspiracy theory.” This is the reality of the type of responses to your news artticles which you may incur, simply as an occupational hazard. Better to get a more sophisticated “Webmaster” than to criticize the readers who actually SPECIFY the particular locations where this is occuring. If it were a “Java problem,” then the feature would not work on ANY like/dislike buttons, not just specific posts.

oto, I hate to admit it but you are correct. Someone absolutely does mess with the likes and dislikes, it isn’t me but you are correct and no matter what anyone says I know that you are correct. But it doesn’t matter, who cares, it actually seems kinda fitting around here but I won’t get into that. The majority of people here never agree with me or you for that matter, so instead of getting 10 thumbs down we get 30+thumbs down. If I ended world hunger I’d still get thumbs down. The other reason I don’t care is because I know it’s rigged, but I will never say how I know this, but you know who you are :)

No manipulation of votes on behalf or by CalCoastNews, the voting software is provided by an outside vendor similar to paypal and other web based widgets ,believe it or not! Karen, Spork, and I, are kept busy with other webmaster stuff!

Someone has told me on certain threads they have manipulated the votes, not very often but I’ve seen it. That person actually showed me that she/he was doing it. Unless things have changed in the last 2 months or so, I’ve seen it myself. In those particular threads that I was told were being manipulated I have voted and instead of one vote coming up 10 will come up but only a certain threads and not that often. If I don’t know about widgets and all that, I have no idea how all this done, I only know what I’ve seen. I’m kinda surprised that no one else has noticed that, perhaps it’s because he/she has only done it on a few threads. Next time take notice of the posts that have 30-40+ votes, pay careful attention when you vote on those at how your vote will jump up or down more than just your vote. It’s been awhile but it happens.

you can reset turn off/on your router and get a new ip address and vote again use the computer at work before you get home and use your phone on the way.
So in the interest of truth I reiterate, no one at CalCoastNews manipulates the votes.
Anyone who suggests otherwise is fabricating falsehood.
Our readers are the only group that can manipulate the votes.
well loved or comment hidden is ALL up to the readership
you only have yourselves to blame, CalCoastNews is innocent!

(Admin edit The pages people see are cached to improve performance. When you “vote” the number updates to the now current number. So if you voted a 4 to a 5 and the number jumps to 7 that’s what happened. As a admin if I wanted to change a comment vote up or down I would need to change it directly in the mysql database by hand, there is no button on my end.
Last word: further comments about voting problems are to be directed to me admin@calcoastnews.com not in the story comments or “a more sophisticated “Webmaster”” will delete them.

oto says: “It has to do with your “administrators” disabling the feature on specific posts, OR your Web site is being compromised by persons unknown.”

NO, again you do not understand how it works.

oto says: “Better to get a more sophisticated “Webmaster” than to criticize the readers who actually SPECIFY the particular locations where this is occuring.”

No oto you did not SPECIFY the particular locations in the many e-mail’s you sent to all of the staff at CCN. Also if you don’t want to be criticized, don’t make public comment’s about things you don’t understand.

“a more sophisticated “Webmaster”” Really? do you really want to go there with me ?

Oh geez, I’m sorry that I got into this. I can only imagine the emails. Her enquiries and obsessive correspondences have been on-going issues with her and county as well as Oceano. I’m out of this one. I actually feel bad for you on this one Spork, good luck.

Nope, I was there watching the theatrical performance, but wish I would have stayed home drinking the beer. NOT ONE PERSON SPOKE UP ABOUT THIS BAD SITUATION AND THE ONLY SPEAKERS WERE THE ONES IN SUPPORT OF LISA AND HER CHARACTER (ALTHOUGH THE CAT WHISTLERS WERE CUTE).

There were 4 rolls in front, all reserved seats, for Lisa, her protectors (one to the right, one to the left, and the two detectives behind her) and City staff from all the other departments in her support. What a thought was really cute was the elderly gray line of old ladies all going up and giving Lisa their hug and kiss. One would go up, hugh kiss, come back and sit down and then the next one would go up. It was cute and very orchrestrated. She’s definitely got the old lady vote! LOL

Obviously, Lisa was worried about her safety (certainly not ours) because their were also 4 or 5 uniform officers out front and oh yea, the captain in the back plus the fire fighters. I think all the City staffers were present and lordy, the City is no longer in the black because the overtime tonight took it all or maybe they got double time off. Curious minds want to know!

Yeah, she has support from Alps who reserved seats, packed the place 45 minutes prior to the meeting, got all the cops, firefighters and their wives out there and the city staffers. It was a stacked deck. The show of force was meant to intimidate and it worked, people who had picked up slip’s to speak, through them down and left, in fact only about a dozen people spoke out of about 200 people.

However, have you ever heard of “mimicry”? There are harmless snakes which are dead ringers for poisonous ones, fish that look like sea weed, insects that look like twigs or leaves…….I could make quite a list.

In the human sphere, there were Quaker Guns, the Reichstag Fire, The Gulf of Tonkin Incident., fiat paper money back by nothing………………..Again, I could make quite a list.

You’re right… I can’t carp about it because I couldn’t be there. Based on your description it sounds like it might have been a horribly intimidating situation for many.? Usually it takes 2-3 people to get things rolling and it sounds like that did not happen.

To be honest though it sounds as if the council members are neck-deep in Solomon’s behind right along with App. There won’t be any justice coming from any investigation from either App or the council. It’s going to have to come from the courts or another full outside agency.

Let’s watch closely to see ultimately how many lawsuits are filed against Solomon and the city…

Get up by 9:00 am Feb. 28, 2012 Pasp Court House Dept. 2
Jay Miller and Gearhart are on the docket, I have been attending since Dec. 3, 08
And have not seen justice ,,,, only GOB, in place to protect the guilty, to hell with King soloman, she only stoled a few hearts, f*cking piece of craps, Gearhart and Miller stole $125,000,000 from 90 year old investors who morgaged their houses! To invest and get ripped off and where in the f*ck is the god dammed cavalry!
These bastards had the rubber stamp made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All anyone asks is that there is a fair and impartial investigation. We all know that the City Council, Manager, or Attorney can’t give us any details of the investigations while the investigation proceeds.

If it were you or me that someone accused of wrong doing like this, we’d want a fair investigation. So, I’m not making any judgments on Lisa because I have no facts. I’ll wait for the report.

However, what troubles me is the process. If the City Council wasn’t involved in picking the investigative firm, and they didn’t know about the allegations until after the fact, that’s not good. But we don’t know because not even that is being made public.

If it just so happens that the allegations are true, then we wouldn’t want Jim being the only one picking the investigators, would we? That’s just not good judgment, because who’s investigating what he knew and when he knew it? If I were Jim, I wouldn’t want to be accused of hand picking the investigators. Oh well….

I do think sites like this help our government run better. We the people have the right to know what’s going on, and if there’s any issues that need to be made the public. We may not always agree with what’s being said, but at least we live in a country where these can be open to the public for open discussion.

To be honest, I don’t trust the council any more than I do App. Paso is SLO of about 1940. A closed system of insiders pulling the strings.

I have absolutely zero confidence any ANY investigation initiated by App or the council. Unless the state or FBI get involved it’s going to be up to discovery and examination made when people sue Solomon and the city.

Don’t they usually do internal investigations first on issues like this? I think that’s what they do. If for any reason it gets swept under the rug or the person that files the complaint isn’t satisfied then it is taken higher up and then an independent investigation would proceed. I believe that’s what happens but I could be wrong,,I was wrong about wrong about 14 years ago so it is possible :-) Usually when there are complaints regarding sexual harassment those cases are taken very serious, I believe more serious than the other allegations, it’s not to the advantage of the investigators to brush it off as they can be sued for a lot of money for doing that. It doesn’t take much for someone to sue for sexual harassment these days. I worked for a company that had locker rooms. A women went to her locker and someone had taped an unused feminine hygiene product to her locker. She sued and won for sexual harassment. The supervisor didn’t even know that the thing was taped to her locker but he was fired. I don’t remember how much money she got but it was a good stack of money. All because some bonehead thought he was being funny.

I saw a bit of the meeting news. I am surprised at how much support she had. From reading these posts I thought that she was the most hated person in the no. county.

I agree with your last sentiment. The only problem that I had with these series of article was basicly the first paragraph in the first article. I honestly believe that it subconsciously played a big part of getting all these people out for blood.

Wow, I am from Paso Robles, I went to the meeting, I saw a couple of signs, I heard alot of snickering while people spoke, what I did not hear was all the allegations, demands, that so many spoke of on this topic. What I did however hear was a story of a young man who died, and the frusteration and sadness of a parent, who wants answers and a thorough investigation of that, his friend whom so perfectly asked for respect and for our police department to listen to the youth when they have asked for help. Everyone there had the right and each of us were given cards to fill out if we would like to speak. Before I again get accused of being on one side or the other, I will clearly state that I am waiting for Due Process. I cannot wait to hear how this is presented to those that were not there. Did people stand up for the Chief of Police? Yes, again they and those who didn’t support her had every right to do so. I have no answers, but trust me I learned so much tonite….

Lots of appeals to emotionality, but when you come down to it, it’s just another case of trying to manipulate people to sit silently while they watch their city fail.

“Due process” is what you get in a court of law. Political activists make deductions based on the information available to them.

The only people who benefit from awaiting “due process” before complaining about the condition of their city are the government officials and employees who are responsible for the condition their city is in.

It is because of citizen political activism that investigations are even started.

“Lots of appeals to emotionality, but when you come down to it, it’s just another case of trying to manipulate people to sit silently while they watch their city fail.”

Who is doing this?

“Due process” is what you get in a court of law. Political activists make deductions based on the information available to them.”

Smart political activists wait until they have the facts as opposed to running off half cocked. If an activists runs around ranting without having facts then they simply look foolish and no one will take them serious. It’s always smart to know what you’re talking about before you act on emotions.

“It is because of citizen political activism that investigations are even started.”

In this case an investigation needs to brought on by the officers filing complaints. Apparently a couple of them have done this so now it’s time to wait and see what happens. The people that were allegedly harassed should pursue this, not you (I’m speaking strictly about the alleged sexual harassment, ticket quotas and retaliation). They can quite easily pursue this. From what was reported there should be tons of evidence and if the dept. doesn’t act on this then it will go further. If there are legitimate claims then there are plenty of attorneys chomping at the bit for cases like this.

Wow, listening to Dave right now, man he is very very upset with Cuddy, calling him old etc. this is becoming quite the war. Dave, calm down, chill. Everyone knows that you hate the anonymous thing, I’m not sure why you keep on about it. Most forums do it this way and for good reason, I’m sorry that you don’t get it but you sure express your disapproval of anonymous posting a lot. I like Dave, but man I hate it when he gets cranky.

I didn’t know that someone was trying to dig up Karen’s past. I feel that’s terrible, absolutely disgusting. I don’t like the first article on this Solomon thing, I still say the opening paragraph was reprehensible but this particular one is better. I will stick with my rant to everyone in saying that it’s always best to hear ALL the facts and both sides of story before judging someone. I don’t know why most of you have such a hard time with that. With that said, I really don’t agree with trying to dig up dirt on Karen, that’s just wrong.

Thanks for taking on ‘Sigh’. I can’t call him names so just thanks to Dave on that.

Oh wait, isn’t’ tonight the big meeting? I would love to see some pictures of everyone in red. :-) I will be watching the news tonight and I expect Cindy to wiggle her right ear for me,,,,,,,,,,,that doesn’t mean wiggling your ear with the middle finger either.

The fact that, allegedly, someone is trying to dig up Karen Velie’s past is unfortunate, but is positive in that it shows how frightened the people who Velie has been writing about are afraid of even more truth getting out.

I’m sure Velie is prepared for it. This won’t be the first time that someone with something to hide attacks the messenger because they can’t attack the credibility of the message…except by getting their tribune handpuppets, like Cuddy, to use his position to attack the messengers for the guilty.

Where Cuddy made his big mistake was that the title indicated he was going after journalists who didn’t meet his –ahem–standards. However, the first two sentences clearly indicated his real target was the citizens who, after reading the info pubilshed by CCN, are concerned enough about their community to speak out.

Citizens have the right to speak out when they suspect their government is doing harm to them and their community. Indeed, it is considered being a good citizen to NOT lay down like insipid doormats and let the elected officials and their choices for important positions know the citizens are plenty unhappy and ready to take action.

By looping in citizen activists into his “swamp gas” pathetic meme, he used the power of his position at the tribune to try to intimidate those citizen activists who have had it with the destructive “leadership” in Paso Robles.

I believe THAT is what stirred up all the anger over Cuddy’s column: pimping your position at a newspaper to intimidate citizen activists into silence is wrong, no matter how you look at it.

It doesn’t matter, Karen doesn’t have anything to hide. She has children who she raised and she has grand children. She has run several businesses and many people have heard that she used to teach bridge and was the bridge club monitor for clubs that used to take cruises, so it sounds like she had a good time during those years and met many influential people. She went to CalPoly after her kids were grown and got her degree in Journalism. She has no criminal history, they can look all they want, they won’t find anything apart from learning that she is smarter than the average bear, something they probably already know…….HA.

Love it, thank you for sharing… I didn’t think someone would take this on without having no fear because these bastards are dangerous and are going for blood. Thank you Karen, Dan, and all the contributors but mostly THANK YOU to the public and employees that have the courage to enlighten us. These public employees put a lot on the line when reporting this information because we have all seen the superior behavior of the kings and queens to us serfs.